The Mount of Transfiguration

158:7.1Early this Wednes­day morn­ing Je­sus and the twelve de­parted from Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi for Ma­g­a­dan Park near Beth­saida-Ju­lias. The apos­tles had slept very lit­tle that night, so they were up early and ready to go. Even the stolid Al­pheus twins had been shocked by this talk about the death of Je­sus. As they jour­neyed south, just be­yond the Wa­ters of Merom they came to the Da­mas­cus road, and de­sir­ing to avoid the scribes and oth­ers whom Je­sus knew would pres­ently be com­ing along af­ter them, he di­rected that they go on to Ca­per­naum by the Da­mas­cus road which passes through Gal­i­lee. And he did this be­cause he knew that those who fol­lowed af­ter him would go on down over the east Jor­dan road since they reck­oned that Je­sus and the apos­tles would fear to pass through the ter­ri­tory of Herod An­tipas. Je­sus sought to elude his crit­ics and the crowd which fol­lowed him that he might be alone with his apos­tles this day.

158:7.2They trav­eled on through Gal­i­lee un­til well past the time for their lunch, when they stopped in the shade to re­fresh them­selves. And af­ter they had par­taken of food, An­drew, speak­ing to Je­sus, said: “Mas­ter, my breth­ren do not com­pre­hend your deep say­ings. We have come fully to be­lieve that you are the Son of God, and now we hear these strange words about leav­ing us, about dy­ing. We do not un­der­stand your teach­ing. Are you speak­ing to us in para­bles? We pray you to speak to us di­rectly and in undis­guised form.”

158:7.3In an­swer to An­drew, Je­sus said: “My breth­ren, it is be­cause you have con­fessed that I am the Son of God that I am con­strained to be­gin to un­fold to you the truth about the end of the be­stowal of the Son of Man on earth. You in­sist on cling­ing to the be­lief that I am the Mes­siah, and you will not aban­don the idea that the Mes­siah must sit upon a throne in Je­ru­sa­lem; where­fore do I per­sist in telling you that the Son of Man must pres­ently go to Je­ru­sa­lem, suf­fer many things, be re­jected by the scribes, the el­ders, and the chief priests, and af­ter all this be killed and raised from the dead. And I speak not a para­ble to you; I speak the truth to you that you may be pre­pared for these events when they sud­denly come upon us.” And while he was yet speak­ing, Si­mon Pe­ter, rush­ing im­petu­ously to­ward him, laid his hand upon the Mas­ter’s shoul­der and said: “Mas­ter, be it far from us to con­tend with you, but I de­clare that these things shall never hap­pen to you.”

158:7.4Pe­ter spoke thus be­cause he loved Je­sus; but the Mas­ter’s hu­man na­ture rec­og­nized in these words of well-meant af­fec­tion the sub­tle sug­ges­tion of temp­ta­tion that he change his pol­icy of pur­su­ing to the end his earth be­stowal in ac­cor­dance with the will of his Par­a­dise Fa­ther. And it was be­cause he de­tected the dan­ger of per­mit­ting the sug­ges­tions of even his af­fec­tion­ate and loyal friends to dis­suade him, that he turned upon Pe­ter and the other apos­tles, say­ing: “Get you be­hind me. You sa­vor of the spirit of the ad­ver­sary, the tempter. When you talk in this man­ner, you are not on my side but rather on the side of our en­emy. In this way do you make your love for me a stum­bling block to my do­ing the Fa­ther’s will. Mind not the ways of men but rather the will of God.”

158:7.5Af­ter they had re­cov­ered from the first shock of Je­sus’ sting­ing re­buke, and be­fore they re­sumed their jour­ney, the Mas­ter spoke fur­ther: “If any man would come af­ter me, let him dis­re­gard him­self, take up his re­spon­si­bil­i­ties daily, and fol­low me. For whoso­ever would save his life self­ishly, shall lose it, but whoso­ever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s, shall save it. What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul? What would a man give in ex­change for eter­nal life? Be not ashamed of me and my words in this sin­ful and hyp­o­crit­i­cal gen­er­a­tion, even as I will not be ashamed to ac­knowl­edge you when in glory I ap­pear be­fore my Fa­ther in the pres­ence of all the ce­les­tial hosts. Nev­er­the­less, many of you now stand­ing be­fore me shall not taste death till you see this king­dom of God come with power.”

158:7.6And thus did Je­sus make plain to the twelve the painful and con­flict­ing path which they must tread if they would fol­low him. What a shock these words were to these Galilean fish­er­men who per­sisted in dream­ing of an earthly king­dom with po­si­tions of honor for them­selves! But their loyal hearts were stirred by this coura­geous ap­peal, and not one of them was minded to for­sake him. Je­sus was not send­ing them alone into the con­flict; he was lead­ing them. He asked only that they bravely fol­low.

158:7.7Slowly the twelve were grasp­ing the idea that Je­sus was telling them some­thing about the pos­si­bil­ity of his dy­ing. They only vaguely com­pre­hended what he said about his death, while his state­ment about ris­ing from the dead ut­terly failed to reg­is­ter in their minds. As the days passed, Pe­ter, James, and John, re­call­ing their ex­pe­ri­ence upon the mount of the trans­fig­u­ra­tion, ar­rived at a fuller un­der­stand­ing of cer­tain of these mat­ters.

158:7.8In all the as­so­ci­a­tion of the twelve with their Mas­ter, only a few times did they see that flash­ing eye and hear such swift words of re­buke as were ad­min­is­tered to Pe­ter and the rest of them on this oc­ca­sion. Je­sus had al­ways been pa­tient with their hu­man short­com­ings, but not so when faced by an im­pend­ing threat against the pro­gram of im­plic­itly car­ry­ing out his Fa­ther’s will re­gard­ing the re­main­der of his earth ca­reer. The apos­tles were lit­er­ally stunned; they were amazed and hor­ri­fied. They could not find words to ex­press their sor­row. Slowly they be­gan to re­al­ize what the Mas­ter must en­dure, and that they must go through these ex­pe­ri­ences with him, but they did not awaken to the re­al­ity of these com­ing events un­til long af­ter these early hints of the im­pend­ing tragedy of his lat­ter days.

158:7.9In si­lence Je­sus and the twelve started for their camp at Ma­g­a­dan Park, go­ing by way of Ca­per­naum. As the af­ter­noon wore on, though they did not con­verse with Je­sus, they talked much among them­selves while An­drew talked with the Mas­ter.